“Whatever we think of the goal of integration into Azerbaijan, what is totally and absolutely unacceptable is to achieve that through genocide,” Smith said. “The government of Azerbaijan has never worked toward a solution that would address the fears of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh that integration really meant that they would be genocided or ethnically cleansed.”
One of Smith’s witnesses, David L. Phillips, adjunct professor for conflict resolution and mediation at Georgetown University, said during the hearing that there is “no question” that Azerbaijan’s blockade of resources into Nagorno-Karabakh is intended to be genocidal.
“[These] actions [are meant] to erase the Armenian physical, religious, and cultural presence in Artsakh and eventually the Republic of Armenia, which has now been whittled down to a fraction of its historical size and seen the elimination of all of its Christian population and churches,” Phillips said.
Another witness, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo, seconded that opinion, stating that Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has a right to defend his actions in a criminal court but that “at this stage, there is no doubt that [genocidal] intentions are there.”
Ocampo said genocide takes many forms and does not require “many persons dying, killings, [or] gas chambers” but that international law recognizes “creating conditions to destroy the people” as genocide and that blockading the Lachin corridor “is exactly the conditions” that will do that.
“The first step is to remove the denial,” Ocampo added.